LOST episode 409: "The Shape of Things to Come"

(There's an interesting photo update at the bottom)

Well we learned that Ben certainly knows enough about the Smoke Monster to be able to direct him. And we learned that he manipulated Sayid into volunteering to be his Future Assassin.

But what I learned more than anything else is that the series LOST has become the show about Benjamin Linus. Ever since the craven "Henry Gale" showed up in the wayward hot air balloon (with a yellow smiley face air bag!) the show stopped being about the survivors of Flight 815 and how they live in a mysterious island and when/if they'll ever get home. The show became about the Island itself and about its (at that time) avatar, Ben--who was certainly LOST himself.

"The Man Behind the Curtain" in season 3 showed us Ben's complicated history, how he came to the Island and how he took his first steps on the path of serving the Island's needs. But we don't yet know how the craven, semi-mute son of a Workman fully became the duplicitous, fighting/killing machine that we saw on display in last night's episode.

We also see that the war between Ben and Charles Widmore is (all things considered--and discounting the very real deaths committed by both generals) more cordial than we had thought. So cordial in fact that Ben can "drop in" on a sleeping Charles in London with no fear of attack. This leads me to my first impetuous guess of the last five episodes of this season . . . Charles Widmore is Jacob!

Yep, think about it.

We know that Jacob is (in what we've been able to see) an older man with little to no hair. While some people guess that points to Locke (how? I ask), or to Christian Shephard (why bother? I ask . . . espcially since Jack is increasingly irrelevant as a character now), I point to the balding dome atop Widmore. Also, it is clear that Ben and Charles have an adversarial, yet cordial relationship--perhaps one that points to the fact that Widmore can only project a faint presence of himself onto the Island (HIS Island, he said) that he can't seem to reach. I don't know WHY Widmore claims it to be his, unless he is the immortal leader of the native tribe represented by Richard Alpert, and he built the four-toed statue somewhere in the deeps of time past.

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking now.

UPDATE:

I found a photo this morning of the stone door that Ben goes through before "calling" the Smoke Monster.



As soon as someone smarter and more dedicated than me translates the runes on the door, I'll let you know what they find. Thanks to DocArtz's Lost Blog for the image.